TOLDOT: a Dvar-Torah in Progress...

This is unpolished, un-edited, but hopefully it makes sense. Enjoy! I look forward to your feedback! ☺
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When describing Yaakov Avinu, the Torah refers to him as איש תם,, (ish-tam), that is a 'simple person.' Rashi explains the word תם(tam) to mean ‘wholesome,’ and one who does not engage in trickery or deceipt. Then Yaakov goes on to be quite the trickster! He tricks Esav into selling his birthright to him, and then steals the brachah (blessing) out from under his nose by literally disguising himself in front of blind father and pretending to be his brother. Later, when working for Lavan, there is complex trickery involving sheep breeding and sneaking off in the middle of the night. How do we square all this with the description of Yaakov as איש תם?

Simply put, it would seem that the Torah is teaching us that one can be one thing, even if many of the defining actions of one’s life are counter to that one thing. For instance, an honest person may tell white lies (‘yes honey, that dress looks GREAT on you’), or, perhaps more ominously, a man of peace may declare war. One has to know what his essence is, and how to move through the world with that knowledge, to know that even if one is forced to do an act which one finds distasteful, it does not necessarily sully his character.

For someone who has studied classical Western thought (the Greeks), particularly Plato, this appears as one manifestation of the dialectic between being and becoming, a constant tension between existence and creation, stagnation and motion, which all of us are engaged in all the time. We are constantly defining our reality while, at the same time, we are moving through and changing that reality.

Last night a visiting Rav at the Yeshivah was giving a talk about sureness, about us finding a balance between a willingness to question and a knowledge of what we know to be true. For me this appeared to be yet another manifestation of the same question. In the end, it’s an epistemological (knowledge) question, how does one ‘know’ anything? And a step beyond that, how can one be ‘sure’ of anything when our knowledge is so dependent? Plato solved this question with his theory of the higher spheres of existence, where ‘things’ exist in their perfect ‘idea’ forms, and that we are somehow inherently capable of tapping in to that reality. A similar idea exists in Judaism, in that one knows all the Torah (the definition of Truth and Reality) before one is born, and forgets it upon birth. Thereby a Jew learning Torah is like someone who has forgotten being led through clues which remind him of his forgotten knowledge. And the transmission issue is solved by revelation. The being which defines reality told us in [so to speak] his own words what reality is and what is expected of us.

But even then, how do we know our application of that knowledge is correct? How can we be sure? Personally, I try to strike a balance. I am as sure of certain things as a person can honestly be, which is to say, I know nothing of any importance about which I have NO doubt. Nonetheless, movement through this world requires one to temporarily discard that 1% of doubt, and act. But one needs to continue to go back and forth between surety and doubt, between an ultimate reality and openness to potential cracks in that reality. My knowledge of Torah and Hashem is one of these matters, and the further down I go into specifics the larger my doubt margin grows, from a .001% doubt of Hashem’s existence, to a 3% doubt (making up statistics is can be fun!) about how to wash my hands [ritually] before eating bread, and other things I am less sure about, which I would not claim ‘sureness’ about at all. It’s easy to be open to hearing counter-arguments about non-dependent realities. If someone convinces me that I am washing my hands the wrong way, I just change and do it correctly. But what do we do with arguments which challenge our core assumptions, the basis upon which we build our entire lives? Am I really open to challenges about G!d’s existence? When I’m at my best, I’m not afraid. I know I can handle any intellectual challenger, and feel that I stand on firm ground. But when not at my best I get defensive, I pull out of the conversation or use rhetorical tactics to end the argument in my favor without really engaging the issues raised. Ironically, my response depends more upon myself than on the arguments raised.

In essence, my response depends on which side of the dialectic I am currently on. Am I SURE or CHALLENGING, am I being or becoming, doing or contemplating? I believe that a healthy way of moving in the world demands a constant tension between these two states.